Have you ever had the chicken pox? Chicken pox is a malady that my generation was the last to have to endure. Not long ago the vaccination for chicken pox was much worse than a shot, you actually had to suffer through the disease. I still have a few scars from my battle that kept me from my second grade field day.

Humans get sick, fight a battle with a germ then learn how to defend against it forever. The internet might be able to store much more information than the human brain could ever imagine but it still can’t immunize against a disease. The Internet has generations of evolution in front of it before it’s as advanced as its makers.

It’s still up to us to decide if our websites are healthy. Oftentimes a seemingly functional website may be suffering the most. A website might not look under the weather, but you might be able to discern something is wrong once you understand that people are not able to properly utilize the site.

So how do you diagnose something is wrong if it’s not easy to tell? Revenue River Marketing has come up with six of the most common symptoms your website might be suffering.

It’s likely that you’ve amended all of the symptoms in the past, but again, your website’s immune system just doesn’t exist. If your site is suffering from any of the following don’t hesitate to call a proverbial ambulance.

Unresponsive Website

I’ll bet your website looks great on your computer. You wouldn’t have signed off on it if it wasn’t immaculate. Have you gone to it on your phone and had to scroll with your fingers to see some of the content on your homepage? It’s a minor nuisance to you isn’t it? What might seem minor to you is not to people visiting your site. They don’t work there, they don’t have to be on it, and if the site isn’t compatible with the mobile device that they’re on, they’ll move on to a competing site that is without blinking.

According to Tim Arnold of Beaconfire there are six things to look for when making a static site dynamic for mobile response;

Coding

Design

Classes and IDs

Image sizes

Page consistency

Navigation

With the proper support and know-how you shouldn’t have any problem redesigning your website for mobile devices. If you are looking for help look at a platform like the HubSpot COS, which is a practical and cost effective way to cure your unresponsive ailment.

Not optimized for SEO

There is not a harder thing to diagnose than proper SEO optimization errors. Just a few years ago SEO was a different game, keyword dumping trumped all, metadata was overlooked for more obvious places to cram words into sites. Recently Google has been making SEO strategists earn their money, and oftentimes not earn it at all.

Do you know what Panda 4.1 is? If you think it’s a bioscience experiment to keep pandas from going extinct then there is a good chance that you need a little SEO help.

Tools, such as the COS make it easy to optimize using metadata, photos and great content. Best of all there is a tool that displays each keyword and how often it’s searched and how difficult it is to rank. While the cure isn’t simple, the right amount of research and discipline and of course the proper tools and your website will be ranking on the first page soon.

Website too difficult to make changes to

What system are you using to run your website? Do you need a well-trained group of web developers to make a few edits to your site? A little bit of coding is necessary, but you should be able to bold a word and move on without having to fill out a work order form or waiting for your staff to free up time.

A small web team is not only more affordable, but also more efficient. If your site is easily editable then a small team is practical.

There are plenty of cures for this symptom. Simple web platforms are a dime a dozen, but if you are simplifying you likely need more than most simple site platforms can handle. The COS offers a system so easy that not only will you be able to make simple changes, you’ll be able to create pages on your own, yet it can also handle diverse, complex designs.

Static website, stale content

Do visitors to your site get the same content? That was okay a few years ago, but now dynamic content is the trend. If it’s someone’s first time on the site they likely want to see different information than they would their second time. If they’ve filled out a form or two looking for more information then they’re further along in the buying process and should instantly be looking at something a little more personalized than the same content that someone who accidentally stumbled across your site from a misspelled Google search.

Once again, the miracle cure seems difficult to obtain, but it’s really not. Based on IP address, geography and history, hosting platforms such as the COS directs different users to different content. It might sound like voodoo, but it is western medicine at its finest.

Cobbled – Multiple support platforms

If you don’t mind looking up multiple passwords and dealing with multiple vendors to keep your website current then this symptom might not matter to you. But, when your product page goes down and your home page is buggy, wouldn’t it be more efficient to call one vendor or use one web developer to fix it?

There is a very simple cure for this, simply migrate your site to a single platform. There is no excuse to continue with this sort of sad existence.

The COS and similar hosting platforms utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which allows very high speed because the CDN is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the internet. Now that you know the cure for slowness there is no excuse not to order the prescription.

Like my chicken pox scars you’re website’s disease is going to leave a scar as well, one to your company’s bottom line. How big of a gash will it be? Only you can stop the bleeding, but downloading the Six Symptoms of a Sick Website eBook and considering the Content Optimization System (COS) are important first steps to nursing your site back to health.

Revenue River often times will publish posts from guest authors who are either looking to start a career in the inbound marketing field or have valuable expert insight from experience within different areas of the industry. To learn more about a specific guest author, look for a short bio at the bottom of every article written.